Legal experts: Email meeting was illegal

Counsels to Colorado Press Association say copying third person is all it takes

BY JEFF TUCKER
The Pueblo Chieftain

Published: August 7, 2014;Last modified: August 8, 2014 09:28AM

Two nationally recognized experts on open meetings and freedom of information laws confirmed this week that three Pueblo City Council members engaged in an illegal meeting over email with a county employee.

Christopher Beall and Steven Zansberg are attorneys with the Denver law firm of Levine, Sullivan, Koch & Schultz, one of the nation’s leading firms in freedom of the press issues. Both have long histories representing media on freedom of information matters and both have advised the Colorado Press Association for many years.

Zansberg is the president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

They said Thursday that the instant three council members were copied on the email exchange with Pueblo County Transportation Director Greg Severance on his “bazooka plan” against area trash haulers, they were in violation of the Colorado Open Meetings Law.

“One does not need to affirmatively ‘speak’ in order to be a participant in ‘a meeting at which public business is discussed,’ ” said Zansberg.

“When three city council members (either all at one time, or in a series of emails) discuss ‘public business’ without providing notice to the public of the ‘meeting,’ and they also deny the public its right to ‘attend’ and observe that meeting, they are violating the Open Meetings Law. That is absolutely clear.

“No decision needs to be made in ‘meetings’ conducted via email; the fact that the council members are discussing public business outside of the public’s view is itself unlawful under plain terms of our state statute,” Zansberg said.

In emails obtained by The Pueblo Chieftain , Council members Ami Nawrocki and Chris Kaufman discussed with Severance a plan to hire a consultant to study mandatory trash hauling before the November election.

Both Kaufman and Nawrocki responded to Severance’s email in early July and those replies were copied to Council President Sandy Daff. Kaufman and Nawrocki said they were in agreement with the plan. But Daff responded by saying she doesn’t typically respond to group emails.

“Had Ms. Daff said she simply did not want to receive any further such communications, and that all such discussions among three or more council members must be done in the open, at a properly noticed public meeting, that would be a very different set of facts,” Zansberg said.

Beall said the key is three.

“When one council member forwards to a third council member the thread of an email communication between himself and a second council member, where those two council members were discussing public business, then that forwarded email thread constitutes a ‘meeting’ under the COML (Colorado Open Meetings Law),” Beall said.